No monkeying around with recycling
September 18, 2009
Posted in Lifestyle
The three-bin system for collection our household recyclable materials.
Regular readers of Treevolution may know that towards the end of 2007 we signed up with Resolution Recycling to collect recyclable materials from out home every two weeks. At R360/year it was a good deal for us, especially as they recycled everything in an environmentally-friendly way. Unfortunately it seems it wasn’t such a good deal for Resolution and they filed for liquidation in June this year.
The result was that we had a 40L dustbin full of recyclable materials with nowhere to go. And over the next two months the collection grew rapidly. Despite wanting to recycle we had no easy way of doing it. Until I spotted a Resolution Recycling bin in our neighbourhood with an Ecomonkey sticker on it. We’d heard of Ecomonkey but as far as we knew they didn’t operate in our area. I phoned them that day and it turned out that they had started a collection in our area on that very day so we signed up.
Ecomonkey also collects standard recyclables (glass, paper, plastic and metals) every two weeks but the service costs more than Resolution’s did but at R79/month it’s not unaffordable.
Unlike Resolution, Ecomonkey encourages members to separate out the individual material into different bags before put out for collection. You don’t have to, apparently, but we do, using our three-bin system down the side of the house.
Ecomonkey does appear to be expanding fairly quickly and adding new collection areas to its service so it is worth taking a look to see if they cover your area. We’ve now been signed up for a month and so far everything has worked out perfectly.
First signs of life
September 18, 2009
Posted in Garden
The Garden Cress is very happy in its rich compost mixture.
It was just day four of the project when the first signs of life started poking through the soil in the seedling trays. The garden cress was remarkably quick to sprout and by the end of the first week had more than a handful of leaves to show for my efforts. Which boosted my confidence in my gardening skills no end. This was easy.
Boosted by my new-found confidence I scratched around for a few small pots and splashed out on a few more seed trays and got to planting some more seeds. One of the things I am keen to grow is Lavender. We have a narrow pathway down the one side of our house and after seeing a few good examples of lavender-lined stone pathways decided that something similar would be a good way to decorate an otherwise ugly piece of garden. To do this we need a lot of lavender so rather than buying it from the nursery I decided to try and propagate some from a few existing plant branches (largely unsuccessful so far) and plant a packet of seeds.
The table. The three trays in the forground are the newest plantings and the lavender is is the green pots and the trays at the back left.
Lavender
The first thing I learned about lavender is that there is not such thing as “just lavender”. There are literally hundreds of different types of lavender, each with their own flowers, leaves and habits. In the end I settled on traditional English Lavender because it seems ot be the most popular so if I have problems with it I’m likely to find help relatively easily. I planted the lavender seeds (which are infuriatingly small and difficult to work with) in a couple of loose pots and two large seed trays.
Potting medium
Up until now I’ve been planting these seeds in trays and pots filled mostly with compost that we’ve produced at the bottom of the garden and a little sand. I’m now worried that this may not have been the best idea but I suppose we’ll find out soon enough. At least the cress is enjoying their new rich home.
As a test I planted a few more trays of seeds over the weekend. These extra three seed trays are planted with watermelon, sweetcorn and cucumber seeds. The test part is that I planted these in trays filled with a mixture of finely sifted compost mixed with a healthy dose of river sand. This guide suggests a seed-starting medium or potting soil. Maybe next time I’ll look at potting soil but for now river sand and compost it is.
Herbs, day 1
September 7, 2009
Posted in Garden
Monday morning and the first day of the new gardening project. I only had six seedling trays to hand so I filled them all with seeds for chillis, sweet basil, coriander, lettuce, dark-leafed basil and garden cress. I’m thinking of building a more permanent structure on this side of the garden for growing seedlings but I want to test out how they fare here before launching on the building. When they do start to come up I’ll need to have something to protect them from birds but that’ll come later in the week. I also need a higher table. The current one is made from old scraps including an old wooden walkway which we replaced some time ago.
Seedlings: Getting started
September 7, 2009
Posted in Garden
This is the start of a series of regular posts tracking my gardening skills. I’m not a professional, I’m not practised, and I’m pretty clueless when it comes to growing plants. Over the past ten years I’ve spent more time behind a computer screen being a geek than I have in the garden. But recently I started enjoying gardening and I’ve decided that the best way to hone my skills is to give gardening a shot while documenting the (no-doubt countless) mistakes I make on this blog. The one thing I’ve learned over the years is that one of the best ways to learn from mistakes is to write them down. That way they are recorded and can be used as a measure of progress.
So, pitting a geek against a garden, let’s get started with Project Green.
